A Hundred Challenging Things
by season5girl
Summary: Remus isn't having a very good week. It's embarressing, confusing, and it's all Sirius' fault. Mild slash.


Somewhere, in the back of an old drawer, beside quills with nothing but the residue of dry ink on their nibs to remind them of their purpose, settled in next to dead parchment off colored by time, dusty and unused, Remus Lupin has left his dignity, quite forgotten until he needed it.

It would be simple to retrieve in theory (that pretty way things are easy in theory, that unpleasant way they decide to be realistic and stubborn when you meet them in person), just a little pull and there would be, spilled but contained, the contents of a drawer in which he's kept his life, all those elements of himself everyone already knows, the quills, the paper, the everyman books. And in the corner, that back corner where he keeps his shadows, hidden in the dark, those hushed things no one can know, the sort to come out only at night, to sit upon the window ledge and haunt your dreams from water color to vivid life.

But away from this, just on the right, near his hope and longing, there it is, that blasted dignity, tucked so he might never find it.

It's never quite so easy. The drawer sticks on it's sliders, so everything rattles and shifts when you pull it. The dresser is in a room, but which one? He's lost it all by this point, the map, the memory, the key to open the drawer.

-

It's not over a kiss, or a spot of jam all day residing on his cheek with no one bothering to mention; it isn't over his fumble on the broomstick, or his endless fumbles in Potions' where it is only his cauldron that leaks odors, or turns colors no one's ever wanted to know about. He didn't lose his dignity over something so humiliatingly plausible, but over something very, very absurd.

"Can we not say 'lose'? It's just... it portrays rather a bleak scenario, doesn't it?"

"Lost, lost and gone forever... into the wilds, off it trots!"

"Misplaced."

"Dead! Dead and gone. I shake my head, my shaggy, witty head. Oh! The tragedy! Moony's lost his pride!"

"Misplaced, Moony has misplaced his pride, and really, can we not? This. Can we... skip it?" But of course even as he said it he realized how ridiculous a suggestion it was.

Sirius' eyes went wide. Remus, rather than stare, politely returned to his homework.

"We Marauders skip nothing, Moony, NOTHING. Not breakfast, the manliest meal of the day, nor the opportunity to turn the Slytherin's heads a lovely green to match the emotion they feel every time they look on us, nor a chance to point out each other's flaws for the betterment of ALL. Speaking of, how can you be doing homework at a time like this?"

Remus sighed. "There is no time like this, Sirius. It is normal, everything is very normal, and normally I always do my homework on time."

"That sentence had far too much in it that was trying to make sense and didn't."

-

The ridiculous part was that Remus had never once done a spell outside of the classroom - discounting, of course, nocturnal extravagances with Sirius and James and Peter, but Remus was so often discounting Sirius that he wasn't sure if it really counted to mention.

The unbelievable part was that the poor girl was on a stage at the time - after a somewhat troubling term scholastically (but a brilliant one in so far as 'fun' and 'sneaking alcoholic beverages into the dorms in VERY imaginative and possibly illegal ways' were concerned) it had been the headmaster's idea to award those few worthy students with medals of merit and to set this all up to take place in the Great Hall wherein a stage had been constructed with fifty or more rows of seating staring straight, embarrassingly straight, at it.

The predictable part was that Sirius had provoked him (there was nothing surprising in this, nor, really, in Remus' humble retaliation). There was, after all, only so much Sirius one could take before something had to be done about it.

The odd part was how the spell bounced, bounced, out from Remus' wand where he hadn't intended it to be in any case, not really if he'd thought about it; how it missed Sirius entirely and instead collided with an impressive display of fireworks that he, Sirius, was setting off illegally with his own wand at that precise and troubling moment; how in some way this collision changed the makeup of the spell, and how it bounced, unbelievably, bounced, into the poor girl with the mousy hair, receiving her award, too many pairs of eyes watching it bump into her.

Remus cringed, he turned maroon when he thought of it.

The slack-jawed headmaster watching the spell traveling merrily across the stage, the terrified girl, the delighted Sirius.

It hurt. Somewhere in the back of his eyes, the spot he was quite sure had once contained his dignity.

The humiliating part was how the clothes just shrunk away, how dead silent it all went, how, into that still and pounding air Remus, foolish little Lupin that he was, said all too loudly and viscerally:

"Er..."

And to make things better:

"Er... I... it wasn't meant to do that."

A million eyes turned to face him. Him. Remus Lupin, who, absurdly enough, was standing on stage as well, waiting in line just behind Sirius to receive an award he really wasn't sure he deserved.

-

It's funny how one assumes Sirius would share some of the embarrassment in all this, more than a bit of it having been his fault to begin with. It seems reasonable enough that he'd share in the humiliation Remus was feeling on a fairly constant basis these days, one assumes this, and then, as Remus did, one realizes how it's Sirius and how there is nothing reasonable or even very pleasant about him. And, if you are Remus, sometimes you squint at him across the table and have these thoughts, until he notices and drops his fork from surprise.

Remus decided yesterday, three days since the incident, that there was nothing more he could do, having apologised too profusely for words, having lost too many points to be pleased over but too few, he felt, to be properly punished, except act as though it never had happened.

So, naturally, he was doing his homework.

He hoped, he knew, that somehow or other he'd wake up one morning to the realization that he had never been up for an honorary award, never been on that stage, or given a wand, or taught spells in the first place. That none of this, in short, had ever happened.

Perhaps a dream, perhaps he'd wake up last week in his dormitory room and realize it had all been a dream induced by too many helpings of pudding.

This thought was not likely, especially considering his give-or-take relationship with pudding, but it was pleasant.

He smiled a little at his homework.

"Found a new place to use a hyphen, have we? Come across a new talent of the colon?"

"I think you've exhausted all the pleasantries of the colon yourself, Sirius, in a worrying number of ways."

"I have." He was lying over a large velvet chair, head hanging off one arm and feet propped up onto the other, considering the truth in Remus' statement, "I have, this is true. There's a lot of truth in your statement. Many a humorous anecdote has been EXTRACTED from the BOWELS of my COLONS."

Remus didn't smile, in order to preserve his level of taste, but he did twitch. Just a little one, by the corner of his mouth.

Sirius spotted it, of course, because Sirius was the sort of boy who spotted these things and pointed them out in a lewd and shrill voice to others less observant than he. Often he pointed. Today he only smiled.

"You're a mystery, Mr. Lupin. Right up there with Sherlock Holmes."

"I think you'll find Sherlock Holmes was not, in fact, a mystery so much as a detective."

"Pish. You live to correct me, don't you? It's how you sleep at night. Instead of counting sheep you count the number of ways you've improved me through-out the day." He was playing with his nail-beds, staring intently, no doubt searching for their hidden meaning.

Remus looked at him.

Sirius didn't, but in such a way to bring Remus to the odd understanding that he was not looking on purpose, for some reason Remus didn't know and wouldn't try to guess.

He looked back at his homework, discomfited. His thigh suddenly itched, he could feel the springs in the chair through the old cushioning. He shifted and cringed and was restless and hollow. His heart did one quick, worrying sprint and then shallowed.

"They'll forget about it, you know. By this time next week it'll be something else, just as stupid, just as forgettable." Sirius said lowly, his voice wasn't clear, not muffled, but it was obvious he wasn't facing Remus.

"I'll remember, though. She'll remember. It's so... embarrassing, really. What are we supposed to do? I'll never be able to look her in the face."

"You never did, anyway, some Hufflepuff." There was a pause, Remus wrote something onto his parchment, Sirius flicked dirt from beneath his nail, "Maybe she'll get a Memory Charm."

"I think that's cheating, Sirius."

"Pish." But there was nothing in it, no commitment or meaning.

"Sometimes you have to live with your life outright, no magic to ease it." Remus mused, the feathery tip of his quill running the slow, thoughtful progression across the length of his lips.

Hair on fabric, that slippery, catching noise and without looking up Remus could tell Sirius had abandoned his nails and faced him.

His voice was louder, and a little sad.

"That's... Just, buck up, all right? Lay off the melancholy. And quit it with the feather, won't you?" His voice came a little higher. Remus blinked, surprised, and looked up.

He quit it with the feather.

"I didn't mean to be melancholy," He said, "I only thought-"

"I know, I know. You're ALWAYS only thinking." Sirius leapt up and promptly stuffed his hands into his pockets, he looked at Remus and smiled with half his mouth and not near so much meaning, "You're a mystery, and that's your problem, Lupin."

Remus watched, wide eyed and bewildered, as Sirius swaggered to the portrait hole and stepped out. He didn't try to stop him, or try to say anything. It was slow motion, like a Muggle film strip, Remus sat dazed, without popcorn and without a clue.

The common room was oddly quiet now, darker than it had seemed before with the fire, and the torches in their sconces. Remus felt like shaking his head, to clear away the unreality of whatever world he'd just stepped into.

"Well." Remus said to his homework, "I didn't mean to be a mystery."

-

The next day and it was a late breakfast for Sirius, who hadn't felt much like food at dinner, and so was the starving only teenage boys who lose all their nutrition running amuck can be.

He and James. Sat side by side. Peter across from them, he'd been done eating for awhile now, and instead watched them, eyes bulging a little.

"You don't even stop for air." What would have been disgust from any other civilized person was abstract awe from Peter.

"'es we oo."

"Potter, that's disgusting, where did you learn your manners?" Sirius chided, speaking with a precise dictation as he'd shoved all the porridge to one side of his mouth. It began to dribble out the corner.

"No, you don't!" And he caught it on his spoon and in again it went.

Someone entered the Great Hall. Peter looked up, and watched, as McGonagal made a B-line for them, with her frightening walk and serious face, as though what she'd really like is to trod on a Peter for a while, just for the change of surface.

"Eh..." He pointed, but it was a bit late as she'd arrived at their section of the table.

"Don't point, Mr. Pettigrew." She wanted to roll her eyes, he could tell.

She turned her attention wisely to the other side of the table, "Mr. Potter, Mr. Black, please remain seated and do not be alarmed, however, Mr. Lupin-"

And here they both stood up, as one, cheeks bulging from porridge and muffins, crumbs skittering down their fronts to pile in little stacks around their feet.

"Uts ong?!"

McGonagall braced herself, you could see it, not so much to continue, as to persevere.

"He has had a slight accident in Remedial Flying and is in the hospital wing, and would likely be bolstered by your presences although, really, I can't imagine why."

James looked at Sirius, who looked at him, Peter looked at both of them.

They sprang into life, the Potter and the Black, and, struggling briefly to free themselves from the confines of their bench, proceeded to dash across the Great Hall with great speed, stumbling over their own eagerness, and mouths still shoveled with breakfast.

McGonagall watched them. Peter sighed.

"What happened to him?"

"Dropped on his head as a child, I dare say." McGonagall answered.

"Er... to Remus?"

"Ah. Oh, dear."

-

"You hero! You bloody hero! I could kiss you, just once, for posterity!" Sirius charged into the room, flinging open the door directly at, and still managing to ignore, a poor first year tucked into a corner bed.

"Heave ho, troops," James, right behind Sirius' forward charge, clapped his hands for attention, "And we shall carry the great Lupin on our unworthy shoulders, for he is the savior of all girl-kind, and we're quite fond of all girl-kind."

"Despite their predilection for rejection."

James lost a bit of his air, shoulders sinking to the level of a normal human, and not a general inflated by the good deeds of his comrades.

Remus looked at them as though he'd rather be sleeping.

"You saved her!" Peter declared.

"I did nothing of the sort. She fell on me."

"That's not how I hear it. They say you saved her."

"His legs did, anyway..."

"She crushed my legs."

"Aw, come on, Moony! You flash her knickers at the school, she breaks your ankle. I'd say the universe if balancing things out." Sirius said.

"Where is your punishment, then, Sirius, for being a provocateur?" Remus wondered.

Sirius looked stricken, his hand even went to his heart, but Remus, and perhaps it was the concussion, couldn't tell whether or not there was sincerity in his pallor.

"Seeing you like this is punishment enough! Moony, really, I thought you would've known that."

I do. He thought, but then he didn't really know at all, anything, except that James, swiftly over Sirius' jibe, had pulled a chair up and was leaning his elbows on the bed, staring dreamily at Remus and telling him all the wonderful ways he could show his appreciation for him; build statues, write odes, perhaps an interpretive dance (or a wank in the shower?).

Peter stood by James, being awkward, as he always was in infirmaries, not quite sure what to touch or where to look, he suggested doing Remus' homework for him, as reward and a sign of gratitude.

"Don't be daft, Wormtail, Moony loves his ickle homeworks, doesn't he? It would be like stealing his first-born."

But Sirius just stood at the bottom of the bed, looked at James once, and then back at Remus, suddenly subdued as he had not been when entering; he let James rattle on uninterrupted.

Remus felt light-headed, he knew he wasn't supposed to fall asleep, Madam Pomfrey said so, not for at least an hour, until the medicine had been fully absorbed by his body. But he wanted to, wanted to sleep, to forget the Hufflepuff girl, forget how he'd embarrassed her on stage, how she'd fallen on him from the height of her flying lesson, the white hot pain that reminded him of the moon. Forget James' statues and promised baked goods, forget Peter being lost and nervous surrounded by sterile walls and white beds with wheels for feet.

Forget Sirius, worst of all, staring at him as though this really were the punishment Remus wasn't sure he deserved.

-

Right there! Where it had always been, where it always should have been, in the back corner, on the right, just by the quills and the parchment. Shiny and renewed, his dignity again, a bit inflated by the pats on the back, and the cheers from the Gryffindor table, but all in all much the same, returning to his drawer.

It was funny, how easily it slid open again, how quickly Remus had found the right house, the right room. The dresser, with four solid, wood drawers, and in the centre of each a tiny brass keyhole, scuffed and antiqued, Remus' forever, for as long as he could remember, and as long as he would ever live.

He looked at the keyring in his hand, it had always been in his hand, but there was something wrong. Hanging off the old hoop of brass were three small, delicate metal keys; one brass, one copper, one gold, and one missing.

Remus looked at the drawer on the bottom, the lowest one into which he'd never been, but there was nothing to open it, and no way to find the key he knew he hadn't lost, because he knew he'd never had it.

He bent down, onto his hands and knees, and pressed his eye against the keyhole. It was dark inside the drawer, if he even was seeing inside it, and not just stopped by a patch of old wood. It was dark, but warm, and Remus could tell, if he willed himself to, that the contents were familiar, were comforting, and frightening, and that he'd never had the key, the silver one, because this drawer was not his, only, it was meant for him. A gift, from a friend.

He fell into it, into the warmth, and woke up cold in the infirmary bed.

Sirius was asleep, beside him, in the chair.

-

Remus sat in the common room, near one of it's large fireplaces, Sirius was beside him, but lower, on the floor at his feet. James and Peter were across from them, in over-stuffed chairs.

It was late, he was queasy from a dinner too rich in fats and oils, and too delicious to curb one's indulgences. But this was the payment for that. He put his hand against his stomach and tried quietly not to die.

"Your eyes are going all funny again," Informed Sirius, ever helpful, "It's that grease and butter pudding, isn't it, trying to wiggle it's way up to join our lovely fireside evening?"

"Please don't say butter," Remus controlled his very persuasive urge to heave.

"What about saying lard? Or grease? Or ..." Sirius wondered aloud, trailing off in a manner he, no doubt, found provocative.

"Or bacon. Puddings, cream." James added.

"He's turning green, you ought to stop." Peter. Sweet, merciful Peter, always there in the clutch for a pal when vomit was close at hand.

Remus made a little noise that sounded very much like agony.

"Should we put him out of his misery?" James asked.

Sirius shook his head, "I say it's his own fault for having the stomach of an adolescent girl. If it isn't a cucumber sandwich it sends him into hysterics."

Sirius said this, all too soberly, said things like this as though he meant them, but his back was against Remus' legs, and every now and then, in a moment of boyhood relaxation, he would play with the cuff of Remus' pants, or the laces of his shoes.

"Right, well," James slapped both his knees and stood up, "Some of us have practice in the morning. Coming, oh Beater, dear?"

Sirius nodded up, "Yeah, sure, in a bit."

James pushed up his glasses, "Right." He looked at Sirius, who looked back, and Remus could tell they were conversing in that language of old friends, the one he didn't speak yet, if he ever would.

James flicked up his eyebrows, in surprise, or resignation, it wasn't clear.

"Right." He said again, but with a new concerning tone, and Remus thought he'd run out of all the other words, until he turned to Peter, who was literally how Remus felt; a great lump of melted boy, spilled all across the chair and groaning.

"You coming Pete, or would you just as soon die here?"

"Urgh... my stomach is crawling with fat, buttery larva..."

"That is positively disgusting, Peter Pettigrew, I don't think I can know you anymore, for I will always see you, even from a safe distance, and think of larva. Larva in a Gryffindor tie." As James said this, however, he was helping Peter to his feet.

"Please... let's not say larva." Remus pleaded, his hand going to cover his mouth.

"Righto! Night lads, have fun throwing up, Remus! And Black, have fun holding his hair. He's a great hair-holder, knows all the right angles." James winked twice in quick succession, and lugged Peter to the staircase.

It was quiet, blissfully quiet when they had gone.

Remus put his head back against the chair and closed his eyes, letting the warmth from the fire radiate over his skin, letting his stomach settle; he felt the softness of the chair, felt Sirius' back against his bony legs, felt the comfort of Sirius' hand on his cuff again. The fire sparked. It was peaceful, it was drifting into sleep, it was Sirius speaking and ruining it all, by bringing him back to life with a yelp.

"...Are you all right?"

"Er... what? Yes! Oh... er... what did you... say?"

"You just yelped as would a frightened First Year confronted by Snape's nose," Sirius announced, and then, after the briefest moment of consideration, "You were falling asleep, weren't you? Ha! I, your Lord and Savior, decree that thou art a nance, Remus Lupin."

"Lord and Savior?"

"I could be. You won't let me. I'd be very good at saving your maidenly virtue from all sorts of stone towers and foul-mouthed Slytherins."

"Sirius... if I thought I needed saving, from towers or classmates or from it being, again, suggested I have a maidenly virtue, I'm not sure you would be my first choice. I have seen many a self-inflicted pit from which you couldn't climb, let alone scale a tower, and, anyway and far more to the point, you woke me up."

He thought he'd made a very good point in this. Besides the fact (which he didn't mention, as a gesture of great kindness to an old friend) that it was constantly Sirius himself offering up the idea that Remus' virtue had long eye-lashes and enjoyed skirts. It was Sirius himself who aroused the ire of the Slytherins, Sirius and James, at least, and that had Remus not known them and been thereby associated, he would have encountered very little more irritation then any other Gryffindor in the history of the world.

The room was just returning to it's brittle quiet, the heat just brushing by the edges of Remus' dreamy consciousness again, he was just beginning the sweet, desired descent into a foggy world of almost-life, when Sirius' voice, softer than before, worried him to wake with his own name.

"Remus..."

"Er... yes?"

"...I'm a bit worried, and a bit, you know, from the brandy-" Sirius began, hesitating as Sirius Black never was known to hesitate in anything, ever, least of all the usually blurted eruption of his sentences.

"In the pudding? Are you sure?" Sirius was a notoriously good drinker, and it was not often he became intoxicated by three helpings of dessert.

Sirius turned around and placed his hands onto Remus' knees, and very seriously told him something he obviously meant with all the silly fiber of his being:

"Remus," He said, "I want to be a detective."

Remus blinked at him. Sirius stared back.

"Er... All right, then."

Sirius sighed, he looked away to the fire, to find his meaning in it's ash, "No, I mean... do you know what I mean?"

"Sirius... I'm not sure I know even what you're trying to mean, sort of."

"Blast it, Moony! Think about it!" Sirius turned back to face him. He was colored orange by the firelight. He looked pretty, like he was made from hot metal, still aglow from its forge.

Remus thought about it. A detective. He wanted to be a detective.

"Sirius, I'm trying, but, really, I don't think I know what you're talking about."

Sirius sighed again, but it was determination. His eyes looked wet, but they weren't, it was just that firelight playing tricks. He was looking at Remus, who felt his tongue growing large and his food getting restless in his stomach, he was looking at Remus with those wet, orange eyes made from metal. He was raising from where he had sat back on his heels, up to kneel in front of Remus.

Remus needed a bathroom. Quickly, please.

Sirius was moving closer.

Oh, damn. Remus, unaware of anything else about to happen, needed a bucket.

Sirius had his hands on Remus' knees, had his face near Remus' own, his breath didn't smell of brandy, it smelled of firewhiskey, and Remus realized in one frightful, obliterating moment, that Sirius hadn't needed the loo before, he'd been drinking in his room, and that, just now, he wasn't leaning up to help Remus to the sweet relief of the bathroom, but to do something intimate and unpredicted and silly and that Remus needed a bucket, or a window or a- Sirius' eyes got wide, Remus' hand shot to his mouth, his body plummeted forward as Sirius wisely leapt out of the way, Remus aimed toward the fire, which promptly went out as he heaved too many helpings of dinner into it.

At that moment, he hated puddings.

Sirius leaned back on his heels, mouth a little open with intoxicated surprise.

There was a silent moment when everything was still set up for drama, but it was evident by the lack of movement that it had already come to pass.

Remus breathed heavily, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He grimaced; disgusting.

"That was wholly unattractive, Moony." Sirius informed him.

"Thank you, I do try."

Remus wondered if tonight, when he fell asleep, he would realize that his drawer was missing something from the back right corner, again. Twice in a week, oh dear.

Remus still propped himself up beside the doused fire; then, softly, he felt the tips of Sirius' fingers along the back of his neck.

In slow motions, gentler than Remus would have expected from him, Sirius moved the hair out of his face, what there was of it to move, just the tips of his bangs, brushed the hair aside at his temples, so lightly it could have tickled.

Remus' heart jumped, his stomach, empty now, quivered with a hollow, nervous feeling.

The problem was, he felt so empty, the problem was Sirius' care felt good, his gentle, tipsy touch at the back of Remus' neck. Remus' problem was... a mystery. That was his problem: 'You're a mystery, and that's your problem, Lupin'. Oh!

Oh.

"Oh." He said, realization kicking in, "A detective."

-

That had been the last of it that night; that peak of emotion, or temptation, all poised to be reveled in or regretted, had passed them by with only the emptying of Remus' pudding laden stomach.

There was nothing else, they didn't speak of Sirius' almost actions, or of what he really meant by his odd choice of words. His phrasing was off, but it hardly mattered. Some part of Remus felt that he would have, eventually, understood Sirius' intended meaning even if he had spoken it to him in Swahili, or in frightful interpretive dance.

There was only so much a chap could mean, anyway, by leaning up to you, mouth dangerously close to that dizzying precipice that leads you down, down, once you're over the edge. It's impossible to climb back up, naturally, and much too easy to fall down it in the first place. But thanks unattractively to Remus' sensitive digestion, they were spared any fate possible by the occurrence of something so absurd as a kiss between friends.

Since it, they hadn't spoken of it, and since it, spoken only when in the company of their friends. This was awkward, without seeming so. Remus knew it should be hard, difficult to deal with, complex to navigate around that stretch of map they had foolishly wandered near, so wide he balked that they had not noticed it sooner, and avoided it. Here There Be... Hormones, he assumed. Misplaced adjurations; friendly motives gone awry. Oh, he had a million logical excuses, and used them all up in turn, in dark nights, late, when James and Peter were snoring, but it was all too quiet from Sirius' bed; the occasional shuffle of fabric as he turned over, away from Remus' four poster, or towards.

Remus used all his logic, then, as he lay too straight, and listened to the absence of a clock tick, imagining he was home, where the house would comfort him with familiar creaks, and the wind would whip the eaves in it's calling, longful way, and the brass alarm beside his bed with tick, tick, tick, once a second, to let him know the world was as it had always been, that the house was the same as he had always known it, that the night enveloped him and the moon was thin and dim, and that he was safe. Every second, each tick, counting his way towards sleep.

But it was different in the dormitory; there were no creaks of old wood, laid down in place by hands a hundred years gone, no clock to guide him to the places of his dreams, which were alien and familiar, and felt like a home reversed in color and shape. A reality just off from the one his eyes knew.

He would just lie very straight, and listen for Sirius' breathing, until the strain of reaching into such an expanse of silence and darkness deserted him, and he'd be thinking then of fruit stands, of Venice, of the last line to that one sonnet, how did it go? To that last poem? Tonight there was wind outside the castle, a cold Scottish wind coming off the lake, but he let it carry him anyway, into the dark sky and a hundred miles back, to the warm bed he knew, to the creaks of home, his home, settling down to guard him through the night.

-

"You're up late." Sirius said to him.

Remus was propped in a common room chair - that same chair which brought him the awkward moments from last week, the glances to Sirius and away, always a little too quick now, wondering what he was thinking, worried that if they were left alone someone might try something again. Worried that if they were left alone, neither would try anything.

He was reading.

Couldn't he just keep reading?

The protagonist was in a marsh, beneath a wall of silky cloud, outside a city, learning the story behind his name.

Couldn't Remus do that, for a while? Just that, for a while? Read? Without having to think about what almost didn't happen, what nearly did, what he'd wanted to, what he dreaded.

"Hullo, Padfoot." He looked up, his voice was very soft. It was inviting, though he hadn't told it to be. Sirius sat down tentatively across from him.

"Late though, isn't it, to be up?"

"You're up." He thought it was a reasonable point.

So did Sirius, he could tell, as it threw him for a moment and he looked down at his hands.

He must be tired, Remus thought, otherwise nothing throws him.

"Heh... Yeah, guess I am." Here he paused, leaning elbows on his knees, and he looked at Remus funnily, and Remus, despairing already, swallowed hard and looked down at his book, whose cover had, apparently, become very, very interesting and not just the same old cover he'd used a hundred times as a distraction from the unwanted.

"Aren't you tired?" Remus blurted. He didn't like the way his voice went adolescent, not cracking, but, odd, like letting all the air out of something small and stupid, something who liked to ask pointless questions in order to avoid bigger subjects which scared him because they dwarfed him and made him know himself better.

"Not really. I mean, I suppose I am. I ought to be? It's late enough, passed two now, did you know? But I... all I can think about whenever I lie down to sleep is just... how much smaller it feels in the dormitory, than, you know, when I was still back at ... their place." Sirius was no longer looking at him, but into the bright and cheerful fire, instead, glowing away just the same, no matter the hour.

Remus felt silly for having imagined such unrestrained feelings of passion to be stirred in Sirius just by being alone with Remus, felt silly for having feared he may be leapt upon with unjust need and... and what? Destroy his fragile innocence? Deflower his honor?

Remus was foolish, he knew, he felt it in his bones. He was old and young and too tired to be having this conversation just now.

"You mean your parents?"

But, always willing to have it worse for himself so as to spare someone else, he continued, anyway.

Sirius nodded, "It's just so much smaller than my room was there. Sometimes I feel claustrophobic, in a way, like every thing's too small, and I barely... I dunno."

"Fit."

He looked at Remus.

"Yeah. I barely fit."

"You fit better than most, Sirius, even if it is hard to see sometimes."

"There you go again." Sirius was shaking his head, amused but aggravated.

"Don't say I'm being a mystery." Remus said. He instructed. It was blunter than he'd intended, it was harder, it was not a playful request, he was demanding it, don't, Sirius, don't.

Sirius looked up at him, he was leaning his elbows on his knees again, having shifted before as they spoke; he looked at Remus.

"What are you worried about?"

"Please..."

Sirius brows were concerned, his face was pale, "I won't do... but..." Sighed,"Why are you so afraid?"

"I'm not, I'm just... " Remus looked around the room, desperate. He's just... just what? There had to be something, anything that he was, "It's just... I'm just... reading!"

That did it, seemed to suck all the air out of the room.

Sirius gave him a look. No better way to describe it, other than that. A Look.

"What are you on about, Moony? You're reading? You're crackers is what you are. Are you feeling all right? Do you need me to take your temperature?" Sirius was wicked now, amused by his own perversions, no doubt.

Remus' felt himself pulling back.

"I'm at a climatic point, I'll have you know." He wasn't, of course.

"Aren't we all?" Sirius winked lewedly.

Remus rolled his eyes, and for a moment they were ok again, as if nothing wrong or sad or unknown had ever passed between them. As though they were eleven, and worries, and fears, truths, hadn't really begun to be a part of their lives yet, were hidden away in lucky pairs of socks and old teddy bears that no one admitted to having but still clutched in their memories, sometimes their arms.

It was like that, like the beginning, and Remus felt old, and good, and tempted by the renewed clarity with which he saw them now, older and with more between them. With more to lose, or gain.

There was a pause while they both watched the fire. It felt good, like living in a particularly fond memory, for just a second, warm and secured and well known, too well, from being played on a loop in the back of your heart 'til you know every ache and texture to such a degree that they stop feeling as though they really happened to you, instead you saw it in a film, or read it in a book about somebody else.

"Would you like a Chocolate Frog?" Remus offered, pulled from his pocket.

He was reaching across the space, with the small, tinny package in his hand.

"Sure." Sirius took it, it crinkled, "Thanks."

Remus took another out and opened it as Sirius was chewing his.

"Ha, Dumbledore." Sirius held up the card.

Remus smiled through chocolate, and looked down for his card.

"Matilda Mugwort." He shrugged.

"Mugwort again? Chuck her in the fire."

Remus looked at the card, Matilda was throwing dirty looks in Sirius' direction, rude gestures accompanying.

"I think I'll hang on to her for a bit."

"You've more of her than anyone else in the world all combined."

Remus laughed, soft and subtle, and Sirius smiled to hear it.

They looked at each other across the gap.

"Hey..." Sirius swallowed hard.

"...Yes?"

"What're... we doing?" He was breathing funny.

"I don't know." So was Remus.

"But it feels... nice, right?"

He nodded, despite himself, "Yes. It feels nice."

-

In a house, in a room, in the back of a drawer, near his dignity, near his latest Matilda Mugwort card, was a key, silver and new, brand new. Sirius had given it to him, in his dreams, handed it to him without a word, only his look, like hope and heartbreak carried in the same eyes.

There was that bottom drawer, and Remus stood outside it, bent down low, holding the warm, pale key in his hand. He felt it's imprint, he felt it's purpose, he slid it by the opening of the lock, he toyed with the thought, and felt the dream Sirius beg him (to open it, to chance it), as the live Sirius would be too afraid to do, but when drunk or tired or alone.

But he couldn't, not yet.

He wanted to, and he didn't.

He slipped it in the lock, as if by purposeful accident. But he woke up, then, with a start, before he could turn it.

His heart was hammering, but the dormitory was quiet. The wind was gone tonight.

And in place of his brass clock, in place of it's steady, lulling tick, Remus heard the distinct sound of Sirius rolling over in his bed, restless body against soft sheets, tangled.

The distinct sound of Sirius slipping loose, and shuffling to the door in bare feet. It shut softly behind him.

Remus sat up, and he felt the lack, the empty space in the bed beside his.

Sirius footsteps on the stairs, and Remus, brave and silly and sober, did something absurd.

It did not start with a kiss, or a spot of jam all day residing on his cheek with no one bothering to mention; it wasn't over something so humiliatingly plausible, but over something very, very absurd.

He slid from his bed to follow down the stairs, to their over-stuffed chair, to the worry of what felt good, with the silver key stuck in the lock, waiting with inert patience, to be turned.


End file.
